


I Do

by TheOriginalSuki



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Epilogue, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:13:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24179494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOriginalSuki/pseuds/TheOriginalSuki
Summary: A Ben who never fell to the Dark Side.  Rey rescued from Jakku.  Even in a different timeline, these two idiots can't get their act together.  Maybe an unintentional push from Luke will finally force Ben to listen to what Rey has been telling him  -- and to what he has been telling her all his life.  A "Hiraeth" epilogue.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 46
Kudos: 198





	I Do

**Author's Note:**

> This is the soft epilogue to Hiraeth some people were asking for. You don't have to have read Hiraeth but some of the finer points won't make sense otherwise. Englishable is my beta, as always!

Ben was woken not by one, not by two, but three attempts at contacting him. 

He’d been looking forward to a two-day layover in Takodana, where he intended to do nothing but sleep, waking only occasionally to brave the busy public spaces of the pirate queen's castle to forage some food, and then return to the voluminous bed. The sunlight filtered through the forest and at last splayed onto the pillow in such a way that he couldn't even be put out that it was light. It warmed in the way the artificial temperature regulators could never do in space.

His last mission had been particularly gruelling; they'd intercepted an illicit caravan of children already well beyond the first stages of First Order conditioning, and it wasn't the kind of thing a grown man could witness and not be shaken by. He understood why the Empire and its successor made the storm troopers wear masks. Easier not to look them in the eye.

He was then meant to rendezvous with the Republic forces on Coruscant, but not for two days; as he happened to be in Maz's area, he prevailed upon her old familial friendship to put him up for a night or two.

When his holocom went off beeping, he saw that it was his uncle and chose to ignore it. Two minutes later, the beeping resumed, only this time it was his mother, who he was much more wary to slight. 

At that same moment, Rey barrelled into what could be called his mental common room -- without knocking, as she was liable to do. This could result in some very awkward situations, such as being caught in the middle of dressing or -- horror of horrors -- the one time she manifested, half-asleep, across the space-time divide into his too-cramped bunk very early in the morning, when the male bodily functions served no master but themselves. He should have woken her and sent her back -- his readings told him it was still early in the sleep cycle back on Yavin; but sentimentality compelled him to to watch her for a little while. When she stirred and attempted to climb onto him from sheer elation, he'd had to roll deftly out from underneath her and dash for the shower.

This time she was not bodily present. She was, however, very much awake.

_What are you doing? Sleeping?_ She peered through his awareness as one peers through the curtain of a window.

_I was. But it seems like the galaxy is conspiring to keep me awake. What's going on?_

_Keeping you awake? Why? Who else have you spoken to?_

A certain flavor in her tone alerted him. _Rey. What did you do?_

He could hear the huff in her voice as clearly as if it rode the sound waves in the air. _Why do you assume it's me who's the concern?_

He didn't bother to dignify this with an answer. _Look away_ , he ordered, peddling off his sheets. _I'm getting dressed, and -- you may not want to eavesdrop. I'm calling my mother._

***

"I don't know what she did this time, all I know is that your Uncle Luke has been trying to get in touch with me for the last three hours, and I do not have time for this. She is _his_ padawan."

He liked how Rey became _your uncle's padawan_ when she was in trouble. (Nevermind that she’d been a fully knighted Jedi for going on a year now. Ben had given her one of the two lightsabers he always carried, the one left behind when her other version dissipated and merged with the her she was now.) It was the same technique Leia employed when Ben himself was younger and out-of-order, calling him _your son_ to Han. Or _your brother-in-law_ to Han or Luke when the other was being insufferable. "You're her legal guardian." 

"So are you. Or, were."

"You're right. _Were_. She's nineteen, last time I checked; it's not up to me to discipline her."

His mother scoffed. Age had intensified her haughty features along with her tongue. "That was never the case, anyhow. You happily let her run roughshod over you." Ben took a moment to re-orientate himself at her complete lack of awareness. He stopped short of pointing out that he learned from the best, her very own dynamic with Han. Leia continued, "Whatever I say to her, she'll be earnest in her improvements for the first couple of days, and then she'll forget about it. Maybe it’s just youth, but the only long-term changes we see out of her come from her desire to please you."

"If you think I have any influence over what she does and doesn't do, you haven't been paying attention."

"Please, Ben. That girl hangs the very balance of the Force on whether or not you smile."

"Well, I'm not threatening her with separation. I won't do that. It's cruel, and it punishes me just as much as it does her. Besides, I'm not so sure it would even be possible. She can find me anywhere. And she's always with me."

Something about his mother softened, but it could just be that she gained another wrinkle since the last time he'd seen her. "Well, call your uncle anyway."

***

Ben decided to do them one better and show up.

Of course Rey was waiting for him at the landing platform. Her face fresh and bright, like a sun after a rain shower. He didn't exactly _forget_ how beautiful she was. It was just that every time he saw her again was like the first time; and he supposed it was. She was such a living, volatile thing. No ideal he held of her in his imagination could live up to the unpredictable _fact_ of her.

Rey's joy at seeing him could burn away all the foulness and disease of his days of work and struggle against the First Order. She ran to him -- or rather, threw herself at him with unwavering faith in being caught. He obliged, lifting her easily from the ground and spinning her once, twice, before setting her down. She turned her face up toward him in expectation. So he kissed the tip of her sun-freckled nose in hopes it would placate her.

It did not.

"You missed.” Her mouth knotted even as she spoke.

"Only good girls get kissed on the mouth," he countered.

He could see her transition from indignation to a vague anxiety. "It's -- not what you think."

"Okay, the last time you said that, you were thirteen, and you clobbered a boy twice your size."

"He wouldn't leave me alone. He kept throwing rocks at me."

"He _liked_ you. That's what boys do when they like girls."

"In Jakku, that kind of thing would get you killed."

This was probably true, and being straight from Jakku at the time, he couldn't fault her for not knowing any better. "And what about the other boy, the one you bit?"

"His tongue. Because he tried to put it in my mouth. He was expelled, by the way."

" _Good_. You were in the right there." He'd nearly come down and beaten the bastard himself, but he wasn't about to let Rey know that. Anyway, she was more than capable of taking care of herself, and really, he had no right to be jealous. Competition was systematically stamped out by Rey, despite his insistence that she could pursue someone if she wished, and he wouldn't stand in the way -- if association with Ben alone didn't discourage anyone.

Still, she'd always had her heart set on him, without the slightest waver: just fourteen years old when Luke contacted him to say that Rey was telling other padawans she was going to marry Ben Solo. Ben, who then had the awkward task of explaining to her how it was probably better if she didn't share that information too freely.

"Because they think we're cousins?"

"It’s more that I'm a lot older than you." And then he asked her if she knew what sex was.

She'd looked at him like he'd confessed to not being able to read. "Of course. The animals on Jakku mate and breed in plain sight. Plenty of the scavengers do as well. It's hard to miss. Have you ever seen two blurrgs mate? It's not pretty. The females eat the males afterward."

_Okay_ , then. That spared him a mortifying talk he wasn't even prepared to go through with. (Ben declined to tell her he hadn't known how babies were made until he'd read about it in a book, at the tender age of eleven. It was only then that he realised what the hell his father'd been going on about when he took him on a "boy's only" outing on the Millennium Falcon that one time when he was eight.)

"So, do you know that marriage is like mating between two people?"

She shrugged. "I mean, lots of the scavengers back on Jakku mate without being married. But then the fathers almost always leave the mothers, and I don't want you to leave me."

That slayed him. "Oh, sweetheart ... I'm not gonna leave you. Is that why you think we have to get married?"

"That and Master Skywalker said that married people are joined in the Force, and you and I are already, aren't we?"

He couldn't argue with that. In the end, he'd been able to persuade her that people were not accustomed to hearing about solid marriage plans from young teenagers and that she was better off not sharing without discretion. This seemed amenable to her, and she reminded him frequently thereafter that he'd never actually told her they wouldn't marry. In fact, she brought it up every time they met in person. He was certain she would have now already if she weren't preoccupied with pleading her case.

"And the time you got into an altercation with a senior padawan for calling you by the wrong last name?"

"She _wanted_ to bait me -- look, I could bring up every academy-era transgression of yours, but we'd be here all day."

She had him there. He’d been half as popular and twice as belligerent during his time as a padawan. And really, her misdemeanours were rare. Rey was astonishingly liberal with her loyalty and affections. It took a real nastiness from someone else to get her to turn on that person. But then, she was just as likely to forgive and put it behind as she was to lose her temper. Was it any wonder the two of them were just as likely to argue as kiss on any given tryst?

"How about we just talk about whatever perfectly justified infraction you committed -- that is not, in any way, _what I think_?"

"Why don't you leave that to me?"

Rey wrinkled her nose and shut her eyes, as if she'd just heard an objectionable noise, which indeed she had. Uncle Luke hooked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating for Ben to send Rey back in the direction of the academy. Seeing that Rey ignored him, he added, for her benefit: "Haven't you got forms to practice, young Skywalker?"

Rey opened her supplicating eyes to Ben. Without speaking, she reached with her mind to caress his; the quiet, simple request he knew even as it was made present. _Find me after._ Then she grabbed his hand and kissed the back of it, with the harsh possessiveness of a child kissing a kitten. She walked stiffly around her ageing master with an effort not to look at him.

***

Ben knew exactly where Luke was taking him. His meditation garden was where he led unsuspecting students into discussions, and Ben, though no longer a Jedi himself, was well accustomed to the tricks of the trade -- things like the optical illusions and sensory details that went into the construction and layout of the garden, so that the casual visitor let down his guard before he even realised. Not so with Ben. He'd never exactly made peace with Luke for hiding the truth from him.

Luke sat at his customary place, crossing his legs as though in meditation and Ben, not willing to concede his intimidation, took the same position next to him.

"So what'd she do?"

Luke rolled his eyes across the garden until they landed on Ben.

"What?"

"It's not what she _did_ necessarily, but _how_."

"Okay."

"Some of the younglings were homesick -- as they're prone to be, you know, _you_ were -- and she wanted them to see their families. Okay, fair enough. But she went behind my back and actually _took_ them off-planet. Technically commandeering a passenger starship, furnishing them with an alibi about how she was getting them to help with the restoration of some Jedi artefacts all day and that they wouldn’t be showing up to -- are you laughing?"

"Are you sure you're not just ticked off that she broke the rules and got away with it?"

"She didn't get -- look, I'm happy to give the younglings leave, when and if the time is appropriate. Rey unilaterally undermined me by taking them to meet up with their families at a predetermined location. She stayed with them the whole time, made sure they got back okay, but it makes me look the fool -- like I don't know what's going on at my own academy. Do you know how humiliating it is to have one of the prominent families of your Jedi younglings contact you to thank you for giving them the day off and have no idea what they're talking about?"

"It sounds to me like she did something good for everybody. She didn't abandon her charges and she saw them safely back. What's the problem?"

"The problem is that she's always chaffed under my authority, and I suspect she gets it from you."

Ben scoffed. "I never said anything."

"You don't have to, she's your damn force dyad, she can read your mind."

"So what do you want me to do about it?"

"I think it's time for her to leave."

Ben stiffened. "You can't send Rey away from the academy. This is her _home_. She's worked hard; disadvantaged as a late recruit, she's already caught up to and overtaken everyone her age. You can't throw her away like that. She's a _good_ Jedi."

"I never said she wasn’t." Luke was serene, which always made Ben want to throttle him. "What I said is that it's time for her to leave here."

Ben let his words settle. "You ... want me to take her, don't you?"

"She's ready, Ben. I can't teach her anything else."

"Or you won't."

"Don't you think I know you're going to teach her whatever you want her to know whether or not I approve?" He waved his hand. "She's too unruly for academy life. She has her own ideas about how things should be done. The two of us are both alpha Jedi and we’ve occupied the same territory for long enough. We knew she'd leave sooner or later, and it's not like she's ever made it a secret that she's waiting for you to spirit her away across the galaxy on a whirlwind adventure."

Ben studied him. "I think you're afraid."

"What? Of Rey? There's darkness in her but I'm not --"

"Of loving her and losing her again. I can tell because I'm afraid of the same thing."

Luke's mouth opened wide but closed again on words that failed to form.

Ben said quietly, "What I do is ... my life is very dangerous right now."

"Well why don't you ask Rey what Rey wants? I was nineteen years old when R2 found me and sent me to Obi-wan Kenobi, and she’s far less sheltered than I was. She's capable of making her own decisions regarding her well-being. She was her own parent and guardian for long enough, and she survived. She would have survived until ... well, I suppose she would have come after you in the end, just like she did before."

They fell silent as the whorl of time circled up and submerged them.

Finally, Luke said, "If you won't take her, I'm sending her to your mother."

Ben made a noise between a groan and a growl. He felt a stone beneath his fingers in the clipped, cool grass and threw it as hard as he could across the garden. Free-spirited Rey, navigating the subtlety of insults and etiquette of the political elite. He'd be all right, if it were him, but his father had always suffered more or less under similar circumstances, and it was one of the things that grated on his parents' marriage. Ben wasn't about to subject Rey to that.

"Okay." Ben said quietly. As he did, it settled with a finality that fluttered in his tummy. "Shall I tell her or you?"

Luke just looked at him with arched brow.

***

He found Rey practising forms in the field with seven others, senior padawans and junior Jedi. She caught him coming of course, and was only too eager to drop rank -- to Voe's indignance -- when he motioned her toward him.

As they walked along the fields, diverting from the paths to go wherever they felt moved, Rey slipped her hand into his. It disappeared in his grasp. "That bad?" she asked. "I can explain -- "

"Don't explain anything, Rey.” He used their knotted hands as a pulley to hoist her toward him. His arm came around her shoulders and he leaned his cheek onto the top of her head. "You did exactly right. And Luke knows it."

"I just didn't want them to be lonely." He could measure her sincerity by the substantial quiver in her voice.

"I know."

"Is he going to discharge me?"

Ben let go of her and took a few steps ahead, then turned to face her. He wanted to phrase it the best way possible. "Luke thinks that maybe, he's taught you all he can -- "

Rey's stricken face pained him.

He rushed on. " -- and that perhaps it's time for me to take over your education."

For a minute Rey's face was blank. Then the formal mask of her features melted into wonder. "Really? Ben, _really_?"

He nodded. Her grin beamed so powerfully he feared sunburn.

Her wide open eyes reflected her wide open mouth, and she looked down and up and all around, putting everything together. "And -- we'll get married?"

Back up, back up. Why was he blindsided? This was the eternal discussion. "I'm not sure about that yet, Rey."

Her face crumbled. "Wh-what do you mean? I thought--? You said _nineteen_. I've been nineteen for the past six months!"

"I think we should _really_ consider the ramifications of entering into a contractual partnership before the Galactic Republic -- and a spiritual one before the Force -- it's not something people just do on a whim, and you, you haven't exactly had a normal upbringing."

She levelled him with a gaze that rivalled his mother's. "Not this again."

"Don't downplay it. You've spent your formative years here just ... waiting for me, and I --"

"-- feel guilty." She rolled her eyes. "That you saved me from a life of starvation on Jakku? Gave me a safe home and unconditional acceptance? You seem to think that because I didn't spend my adolescence sneaking booze and making out with boys that I missed out on something. But I'd like to remind you, Ben Solo, that your academy years were nothing of the kind, either! If you weren't taking your frustrations out on innocent combat droids you were in the library memorising from the Jedi texts to make banned transcriptions. Oh yes, I get just as many stories from Tai about you as you give about him!"

She brought up her fists and held them in front of her like a little boxer, riled for a fight. "I wish you would stop. Patronising me. And _listen_. Listen to what I'm telling you, what I've always been telling you.

"I remember so much, more than I've even told you. In one of our other lives we spent all our time fighting one another until it was too late. I don't -- I don't want --" She dragged an arm against her cheek, sniffling, and when he tried to take her hands in his, she swatted him away.

"Do you ... not want me ... the same way I want you?"

For all his ten years' head start on her, his Organa brains and his Solo mettle, it never occurred to Ben until that very moment that he could be _so stupid_.

His body moved without consent, gripped her hips and pulled her flush against him. His voice, hot and whispered, like steam off a kettle. "I do. I _do_."

And since their mouths were already positioned just so, it took no effort at all for him to drop his mouth to hers, like a falcon diving toward prey.

_I do_ , he pressed through their bond, until he was no longer sure which sensations were hers and which were his; the ending and the beginning of them went round and round like the revolution of twin planets around their barycenter. 

It did not occur to Ben until afterward -- after the private ceremony on Naboo before a handful of trusted people (and 3PO) when he'd had his way with her in their own _shared_ bed, and Rey snored softly on his shoulder, moisture pooling in the corner of her mouth -- that they were the words of consummation. And that he had been saying them to her all his life.


End file.
